Valmont Butte cleanup under way, despite concerns about soil, graves

Boulder: Worries about contamination, human remains not warranted

Valmont Butte was a significant site to Native Americans and home to many early white settlers of Boulder County.

The original mill was built in 1935 to process gold. It later processed fluorspar during World War II. Gold-milling operations resumed there in the 1970s and continued until 1991.

The city bought the 102-acre site in 2000, intending to use it for a biosolids composting facility and a fire-training center. The EPA performed an environmental assessment of the site and identified significant contamination in 2004. The city reached a settlement last year with previous operators to remediate the site.

A $5 million clean-up effort got underway this spring.

At the base of Valmont Butte, earthmovers load enormous scoops of lead-contaminated dirt into trucks as workers spray the area with water to suppress the dust and monitors take samples for further testing.

They'll be at it for months, until some 304,000 cubic yards of earth are moved to an old tailings pile that covers more than 21 acres of the former ore-processing site just west of Boulder, near Valmont Road and 63rd Street. The pile will then be covered with two feet of clean fill dirt and another 18 inches of rock.

But even as the long-awaited cleanup of the site moves forward, the project is still stirring up controversy, both from members of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, who don't believe the city has identified all the contamination, and from members of the Valmont School District No. 4 Cemetery Association, the group that maintains the resting places of many early settlers in the shadow of the butte.

Negotiating a plan

The contaminated soil, which contains lead, arsenic and radium, being moved by cleanup workers comes from additional tailings piles on the site, construction debris dumped there by the city and additional contaminated areas -- presumably related to the historic gold and fluorspar ore-processing operations at the site -- identified in testing.

It took years of negotiations between the city, state and federal regulators and the site's former owners for this project, known as the Voluntary Clean-up Plan, to get under way. It's the largest environmental cleanup ever undertaken by the city.

Joe Castro, Boulder's public works facilities and fleet manager, looks over the 1930s-era cistern that was part of a milling operation. Castro was giving a tour of the cleanup site on Thursday.
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Under a settlement agreement reached last year, the city is paying roughly half of the $5 million cleanup cost, with Honeywell International -- the successor to Allied Chemicals Inc., which had operations at the site from 1939 to 1976 -- paying most of the rest. Tusco Inc., which owned the site from 1976 to 1992, is paying $250,000.

If an agreement hadn't been reached, the city likely would have faced a court order to clean up the property, though that hasn't stopped critics from questioning the way the remediation is being conducted.

A sacred place

Members of the Valmont School District No. 4 Cemetery Association say the city has not communicated with them about the cleanup plans -- even though their parking lot, which may contain unmarked graves, is part of the area targeted for remediation -- and has not shown proper respect for the cemetery.

Workers spray down a bucket as a backhoe removes lead-contaminated soil on May 10, 2012, as part of the Valmont Butte cleanup project.
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"We would like some respect for the fact that this is a sacred place for the early pioneer families," said Carol Affleck, preservation spokeswoman for the association. "We have a heritage that deserves to be honored and we don't feel that it's being honored."

A Native American monitor and an archaeological monitor conducted a survey of the site to document indigenous artifacts. The results of that survey have not been released to deter potential thieves.

Affleck said similar steps should be taken to protect gravesites and other artifacts associated with the cemetery.

City officials said they are aware there may be unmarked graves outside the cemetery fence and they said workers will tread carefully in those areas. Their archaeological monitoring and discovery plan applies equally to Native American and early settler remains.

Most recently, association members accused city contractors of disturbing a memorial marker at the northwest corner of the cemetery on city property. The small pile of stones was right next to the cemetery fence and positioned so that the cross at its center was parallel to the grave plots and markers.

The city's archaeological monitor determined the stones had been placed there recently, and City Attorney Tom Carr suggested someone may have placed the rocks there just to create an accusation against the city.

Affleck said no one is suggesting the stones represent a historical marker but that doesn't mean they're not important. Sometimes people visit the cemetery, find it locked and want to leave something to recognize an ancestor.

"The issue isn't that it was historical archaeology," Affleck said. "The issue was a memorial marker next to a cemetery. They didn't even call us to ask us about it. They called us a fraud at a public City Council meeting."

Affleck said the stones had been there at least since the winter, but city spokeswoman Jody Jacobson said workers there immediately recognized it as something new when they found it in April.

Jacobson said the city will take additional measures -- perhaps including installing motion-detecting cameras -- to deter trespassers at the site and that the city is trying to accommodate the cemetery association.

"I do think the city has taken reasonable steps to involve them in the process," she said. "We are trying to be really sensitive to the way the work might affect them. Where I don't think we'll come to agreement is that they don't want us to continue the project, and we have to be good stewards of the land and clean it up."

Finding all the toxins

Betty Ball, co-administrator of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, said her concerns are that the cleanup, as outlined, doesn't address all the problems at the site.

"All of the toxins that are contaminating that site have not been correctly identified or located in the voluntary cleanup plan that the city is engaged in," she said.

The cemetery association and the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center petitioned the federal Environmental Protection Agency to reassess the project, a request the EPA declined earlier this month.

The EPA said there is little evidence that contamination is migrating off of the Valmont Butte site. Uranium and arsenic could not be detected in areas down-gradient from the city property, and lead levels were two to five times below the EPA residential screening level of 400 parts per million.

The city is cleaning the site to a lower, commercial standard of 800 parts per million. When the city bought the 102-acre property in 2000, it was supposed to house a fire-training center, which eventually was built near Boulder Reservoir instead, and a biosolids processing facility that is no longer part of city plans.

Facilities and Fleet Manager Joe Castro said the city has a good grasp of what's on the site and what's necessary to contain it. The goal isn't to return the site to a pristine state.

"Between the EPA studies and the additional sampling in 2009, we have the basic characteristics of the site for what's occurring," he said. "It's risk-based assessment. Based on risk and exposure, (residential) levels aren't necessary. There will never be residential here."

Moving on with it

Once the work is complete and the rock cap is in place, the city will revegetate the site and continue to monitor for prairie dog encroachment. The city currently has no plans for the site.

Boulder Mayor Matt Appelbaum, who wasn't on the City Council when the property was purchased or when the decision was made not to build the fire-training center, said that, in hindsight, it's easy to say that not enough analysis was done before purchasing the property.

And building the fire-training center on the butte would have allowed the city to cap the contaminated soil while at the same time putting the site to community use.

Appelbaum said he thinks there may still be some use for the property, though he doesn't know what that might be.

"The cleanup is going to take a while, and we need to do that and then catch our breath and see what makes sense," he said. "I think it would be great if we could turn it into something of community benefit, turning an unfortunate incident into one we could all benefit from."

In the meantime, the cleanup needs to continue.

"I'm very comfortable with way the city is proceeding," Appelbaum said. "We need to move on with it."

Dave Phillips, left, and Steve Foos, workers from Casey Resources, Inc., take lead readings and soil samples on May 10, 2012, before directing a backhoe to remove contaminated soil as part of the Valmont Butte cleanup project.
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